Professor of Sociology

Tag Archives: Qatar

Qatar World Cup 2022 ‘revote’: Now Australia’s bid could face ethics investigators as Fifa rocked by corruption allegationsShould it go ahead the proposed World Cup will cost Qatar more than US$200 billion. Read it again: $200 billion, that’s £120 billion, or 147 billion euros. This by far eclipses the record-busting $57 billion Russia spent on the recent Sochi Winter Olympics. Even allowing for the fact that Qatar’s climate and its lack of football stadiums means additional spending, a World Cup tournament would cost any successful bidder about the same as the total trade between China and Africa for 2014.There is a widespread myth that global tournaments like the World Cup and the Olympic Games are valuable to a nation. Correction: they are valuable to strategically placed people who stand to profit either in terms of personal prestige (like Lord Coe) or from the political uplift (David Cameron et al.) and the heads of corporations, including construction companies, hotel chains and, of course, the media organizations that carry the events.But since 1976, when Montreal hosted the Olympics – and incurred a debt that took 30 years to pay off – global sports tournaments have hurt rather than helped the economies of host nations. Athens, for example, went broke shortly after the 2004 Olympics and needed the scale back dramatically spending on hospitals, schools and roads.The London Olympics cost … well, actually no one knows for certain, probably not even Lord Coe; but the most recent estimates suggest about £9 billion – an appreciable amount, but still only 4.5% of the 2022 World Cup. Host nations can’t possibly get close to breaking even and, even if sports fans argue there are intangible benefits, such as national pride, export boosts, infrastructural improvements and that old saw the “feelgood factor,” the price is often ruinously high. Add to this the security issues typically associated with high-profile events such as World Cups and you begin to understand why the negatives far outweigh the positives.So maybe the Aussies, Americans and English should be thankful that they were the victims of what now appears to have been a seriously flawed and apparently corrupt bidding process. Sometimes a cynic like me is forced to wonder if there is divine retribution.